Delicious in Dungeon #25: Jack-O'-Lantern Potage and Dryad Bud Sauté With Cheese Sauce

 Bloody dryads, get out of my swamp.

What the hell is this? Horrible. Also I forgot to take a horizontal photo. Lets eat it.

We got a good vegetable haul from the dryads domain. Dryad fruit, dryad buds, mandrakes, mushrooms, and I have some cheese as well, I don't remember how.

We should be able to just cut into the pumpkin like this and lift the top off..

Voila! That went pretty smooth. Now, instead of trying to carve into it while its still tough, and risk slipping and making holes into it, im going to roast the whole thing. It'll become soft enough to scoop out with a spoon!

Don't look at me like that!

Oops! I guess its getting a bit scorched in there so I'll take it out. It smells amazing and its so tender inside. I'll scoop the seeds out first and then start collecting the flesh to use for the soup.

Aah noo! Disaster! My structural integrity! I guess maybe roasting it wasn't the smart move after all.. The inside got nice and soft but the outside got a lot softer than I expected too.

I'll keep it together in a bowl while i continue scooping, maybe we can gently get it out of the bowl and stick it back together when its cooled down.. Also, getting LOTS of delicious pumpkin flesh that smells amazing. I'm going to use half of it now and stick a tub of the other half in the freezer for future recipes.

The stuff we are using I stuck in the blender and it easily turned into the most amazing looking paste. I LOVE pumpkin. It's so bright, so smooth, aromatic, sweet and savoury. It's MAJESTIC.

What else goes in the soup? You can add a soup stock if you want or wahtever, but I'm going to add a bit of miso paste, pickled garlic, grated ginger, salt, pepper, and single cream.

Then we'll need to add some hot water cause its like a concentrated paste and stir it all up, you can add as much as you want really based on your preferred soup consistency! I like it pretty thick.

As for the mandrake root... I decided to do something a bit fun for myself, since the soup had a kind of lumpy texture in the manga, I thought i'd dice into small cubes and sautee the mandrake separately (like with the omelette!) and then stir them back in at the end.

Meanwhile the pumpkin cooled down so I thought i could see if we can transfer it back to a plate or a clear tub...? NEVERMIND ABORT ABORT, ITS FALLING TO PIECES, I GUESS IT STAYS IN THE BOWL. Damn. I screwed this one up, annoying. I could have sworn ive done this before with a roasted pumpkin and it didnt collapse like this, but whatever.

Agh now I burned the mandrakes while I was trying to reassemble the pumpkin! Its all going to shit right now.

Oh well, on to the next. Now for the dryad buds, it would maybe make more sense to do something all layer-y like an onion or a napa cabbage... but, well, the scoop on me is that my stomachs been kinda sensitive to cabbage and allium types and i've already had a lot this week... so my first idea that sounded good was celeriac root...but they didn't have that, instead they had a big ol' bunch of swede turnips in season. So... swedes it is!

I'm frying them in plenty of butter, and once they've had a head start a couple of those mushrooms sliced can go in as well.

Now we need that cheese sauce!! It's getting hectic as hell in here, heres some grated cheese.

I'm mixing it with some more of that cream. 

And adding my go-to cheese sauce seasonings as well.. nutmeg and black pepper! Now to collect all these tortured components and assemble them into.. well, something.

****

It tastes fucking phenomenal damn it. I am definitely making roast pumpkin soup and turnips with cheese and mushrooms again. But... rrgh, i'm still giving it 4/5 because I messed up so many things. The pumpkins been shredded, and I also should have roasted the turnip slices instead of sautee'd them, because they are very al dente in the middle. Which is fine, you can literally eat them raw, but if they were all tender with that cheese sauce it would have been sublime, peak even. The recipe is top tier, but my execution... lacking.

Delicious in Dungeon #24: Travel Rations Set For Adventurers

This adventurer has packed some sensible camping tools, and is enjoying some cosy respite with his party... 

MUST BE NICE, because some of us have to sample the austere pickings of the standard dungeoneer's travelling rations today. How sobering. Well, except the wine.

I got the perfect groceries for the job. Some leftover wine, an artisanal part-bake roll, a big hunk of dry--cured tyrolean speck (fancy ham), and I got a few packets of different nuts and trail mix to get closest to appearance in the manga. Is that overkill? well sure, but these are also like banger ingredients and now i have a fancy ham and a massive bag of cashews to put in all my curries and stir fries for weeks.

Consistent with my ability to have shockingly appropriate bullshit already in my house (i swear i dont have THAT much junk) i have a little canvas travelling drink flask, however i dont actually wanna fill it with red wine (and probably spill it everywhere) so im gonna just fill it with water and have a glass of wine offscreen ok.

Arranged my nuts (thats what he said) in a desirable ratio. Happy november.

A nice slammin blab of fat wham

The bread roll went in the oven for 5-10 mins to finish baking so I could enjoy some fresh hot bread. Ah! caught me cooking on a no-cook recipe, sue me.

****

Senshi complains that this isnt a very balanced meal, but I felt kinda healthy eating this idk. All the ingredients are tasty, I enjoyed the faintly peppery flavour of the ham. Without butter or cheese though, its all a bit dry and plain. And ham cut that thick was very hard to chew.

Delicious in Dungeon #23: Orc Medicine

Hmm I need a pick-me-up after all that dragon battling... perhaps i need some medicine...Orc Medicine!

Dr. Roy M.D. has got us some secret special ingredients.. or just random junk, not sure.

Gonna grate a bit of the ginger, obviously not the whole thing. My concept for this was sort of like a ginger shot and a greens smoothie all rolled into one. A shootie. (hmm needs work)

So yeah dont worry its all edible, its sunflower seeds, spinach leafs, ginger, spirulina powder and a pinch of turmeric.

And a dash of water! so that it... actually blends.

That was fast, looks ready to go I guess. Lok-Tar Ogar!

*

It's giving wet leaves... with a side of choking hazard (bits of seeds) and a fiery aftertaste. I hope this is good for me. Emotionally speaking it is not. In the future I might stick to tea and vitamins.

Delicious in Dungeon #22: Roast Red Dragon, Onion Flatbread, and Dragon Tail Soup

 The red dragon's defeated!

Huh, you already knew that? You saw me roast its hams? Well... I hope you didn't see me drop that sauce all over my kitchen floor...

Since we already had a whole brick of meat, I decided to use that for the massive chunk of meat in this recipe too. It just makes sense. I'm also gonna just carve off a chunk of it to use in the soup as well.

BUT FIRST lets quickly prepare that flatbread. I was gonna get a pizza base or something, but I saw this mini garlic flat bread on discount and I thought itd be kinda perfect, just a single portion of the flatbread for my single self (whos got an entire brisket roast to eat)

I'll chop the smallish onion into thick slices like this.

Topping the garlic bread with some very thinly sliced cheese and the larger bits of onion... It's ready to go in the oven for 15mins, but let's do the soup first!

For the soup i've got those smaller bits of onion, and the recipe mentioned turnip, which I couldn't find but I had some leftover salad radishes so they'll do. browned them up in the pan as you can see.

Then I'm throwing in that chunk of dragon I carved off earlier, some boiling water and 1 beef stock cube. I can also tip in any leftover jus from the roast.

Once the soup has had a bit of time on the hob to mingle or whatever, I cooked the flatbread in the oven. Smells good! 

****

Delicious! I loved the garlicky oniony flatbread with the red meat. The soup was boring, it just tasted like beef stock mainly.. The meat was tough but had a nice flavour. I'm looking forward to thinly slicing the rest and putting it in a sandwich.

Delicious in Dungeon #21: Boneless Dragon Hams

Bit of an odd one this - another sort-of bonus recipe. This doesn't actually get eaten in the end, but since we are cooking a big hunk of dragon meat for the next recipe anyway, I thought we might as well split part of the process to represent this recipe!

Here we have a boneless hunk of dragon, already wrapped up nicely. I didn't have to do the butchering myself so I guess this is it... but!!! Actually, we're going to roast it here, and also show how I convert the meat into a fitting "red dragon" flavour with a sauce coating.

So naturally "spicy and smoky" are what come to mind when I think of flavours for a red, fire-breathing dragon. I've got a fresh red pepper, some olive oil, im gonna use a load of smoked paprika and a lil bit of ginger, and then some of that leftover reggae reggae bbq sauce to add just a little bit of sweetness and other woody spices. 

I roughly chop the chilli and then im just gonna blend this all together. We can a bit of water if we need. I also had a thought, I should probably add salt as well so lets do that.

That's a nice sauce colour! Looks like it'd mess you up if it splashed in your eye. I don't know why I said that.

I scored the meat a bit and then I just sort of slap it on with a thin spatula like im plastering a wall.

AH GODDAMNIT i dropped my sauce container. Fortunately I didn't lose too much, but UGH. This is the kind of tough trials you might face when you take on a red dragon.

It's all sauced up and then I wrap it up and stick it in the oven for like 3 hours.

!!! This just in! I checked the other block of red dragon recipe and its got wine in the ingredients. So part way through as I check on it, lets baste it with a lil' red wine to keep it all moist.

***

I don't really know how to rate this, its not really done yet, its the base for next recipe... But trying a bit on its own, yeah... it tastes pretty good, its quite tough... i don't know what im doing with red meats... the sauce coating is nice but its a little subtle in the end I guess.